Gluten-Free Baking Tips

Whether you have celiac disease, or are off gluten for other health reasons (like a sensitivity, an autoimmune disease, or for healing from autism), you’ve likely figured out that baking with gluten-free flours can be a bit of a challenge.

From figuring out what flours to use, to wondering about gums, leavening and starches, gluten-free baking does require some know-how.

Today I’m sharing some of the most helpful tips I’ve found for baking gluten-free.

My family went gluten-free about 5 years ago when my son was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Asperger’s is a form of autism and there’s a lot of evidence that a gluten and casein-free diet can help and even heal those with autism.

We didn’t notice an immediate healing, but we did notice improvement in our son’s symptoms upon removing gluten from his diet. (He had been casein-free since infancy due to a life-threatening allergy to dairy.)

Going gluten free was a big deal for me.

I was a whole grain baking “maven”, with a whole wheat bread in my repertoire that a baker’s daughter told me I could easily sell.

We loved it. And loved wheat, kamut, and spelt. A lot.

But you can still make tasty whole grain gluten-free treats for yourself and your family.

These tips can help you do that with a little more ease.

Gluten Free Baking Tips

1. Increase Leavening Agents

When adapting a recipe to make it gluten free, increase the amount of baking powder and baking soda by 25%. (The quick way to do that on your calculator is to take the amount called for and multiply it by 1.25.)

2. Smaller is better!

Since gluten-free baked goods tend to crumble easily, making all baked good smaller tends to improve their quality and keep them “sticking together” more. Think mini cookies, mini muffins, and small loaves of bread.

3. Blend Different Flours Together

Just as with alternative sweeteners, it is best to use more than one flour when making gluten-free baked goods. It helps prevent just one flavor or texture from dominating the final product and also helps with texture. I tend to use about 1/2 sweet brown rice and then make up the rest with whatever flours I have on hand (typically that’s buckwheat, brown rice, amaranth, and millet.)

4. Add Starch to the Mix

This is one tip I share with hesitancy. I personally almost never use starches in my baking since we deal with digestive issues (including gut dysbiosis, which is just too much bad bacteria and not enough good.)

Anyway, most gluten free baking “connoisseurs” recommending using a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio of starch to whole grain when baking to give the baked goods a fluffy texture reminiscent of baking with all purpose flour.

For me, our intestinal health is more important than having the perfect baked good around so I prefer to bake only using whole grains.

The only exception is when I am baking cupcakes or cakes, particularly when making them for others and the “sagging in the middle” thing is a concern. Then I will go “light” on the starch and maybe use a 1:3 ratio of whole grain to starch.

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5. Some Sticky Help

Gluten is the part of wheat that gives it its “stickiness”. So when you bake gluten free, by definition, you are going to have a “less sticky” final result.

There are some things you can do to make up for some of that, however.

I use brown sweet rice flour for about half of my gluten-free baking mix, with the rest being a mix of whatever I have on hand. Sweet rice is called glutinous rice (it’s the kind used in Japan) and it doesn’t have gluten but is a little “sticky.”

There’s been quite a bit of information in the news recently about arsenic in brown rice. For now, we’re not switching off rice or to white rice (because of digestive concerns.) We are also buying California rice, which is less of a concern than rice from the southern part of the U.S. I plan to write more about this in the future, but for now, you can check out this link.

White rice flour is safe but I prefer not to use it due to our being a whole grain family.

Bean Flours can be used, but I highly recommend using de-gassed beans and then dehydrating and grinding your own–or you might not be (ahem) happy with the results.

Oat flour can be used, but there are a lot of cautions regarding oats. Some gluten-free folks can’t tolerate oats. Others are fine with gluten-free varieties like Bob’s Red Mill. The oats from our co-op were testing at “gluten-free” levels for years despite their not being certified.

For an extensive list of gluten free flours and their characteristics, check out this post at Whole Intentions.

7. Don’t waste your “mistakes”

There is a use for botched kitchen experiments.

You can use savory baked good mistakes for breadcrumbs (just put in a food processor, run it for a bit and store the crumbs in the freezer), and sweet baked mistakes can be crumble toppings. Both can be used for cereals. Just top with milk or Homemade Coconut Milk or Almond Milk and enjoy!

8. Lower Baking TemperatureI haven’t used this tip much, but perhaps I should. A reader shared that GF baked goods tend to brown more easily so lowering the oven temperature by 25 degrees is a good idea.

9. Put Perfectionism to Rest

I gave up trying to be the perfect gluten-free baker a long time ago. Well, I still feel bad sometimes about my failings, but for the most part I’ve accepted that I am aiming for health–not perfect replication of fake-food goodies.

Case in point:

The other day, I made gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. Not sure what went wrong with these. They were kind of gritty (I’m now wondering if my Blendtec didn’t really get the flour so fine after all :-(.) and they fell completely apart after baking.

The ones I let cool longer in the pan held together better, but still–we’re talking crumb city.

Anyway, I’d made them for a charity dinner function we were going to so the “men” in my family ate them up regardless of the fact that they were crumbs (I was a little embarrassed as they ate crumbs at our table. It was a casual event–but still :-).)

The Homemade “Almond Joy” Bars I made the next day are disappearing faster than the “crumble cookies” but they’ll be eaten at some point.

They weren’t the greatest, but that’s OK ;-).

Ready to use your new Gluten-Free Baking Techniques to make some Gluten-Free Goodies? How about trying:

Comments

Hi, I recently bought a bag of almond flour, which is very delicious! I thought it said can be used 1:1 in recipes to replace all purpose flour. I haven’t tried to do this yet. I don’t see almond flour in your post, I’m wondering if you have any experience with it? It sounds easier to me, but perhaps I’ve misunderstood. Thank you!

You can do that but you might find you need to cook a little longer at a lower temperature b/c it burns easily. You also might need more egg and a little more raising agent like I mentioned in the post. It may or may not work but worth a try!! Let me know how it turns out if you have time!

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Note: Information on this web site was obtained from a variety of resources, including medical and nutritional publications and is provided for educational purposes only. The information on this site is not medical advice and is not intended to replace the advice or attention of health care professionals. Consult your practitioner before beginning or making changes to your diet, supplements, exercise program, diagnosis or treatment of illness or injuries and for advice regarding medications. Statements have not been evaluated by the FDA.